War Tax Resisters Made a Splash on “Tax Day”

[M]y annual voluntary forfeiture of money to my government pays for
violence around the globe, at astounding levels, and I am not able to
provide any more excuses or rationalizations that paying without protest,
that being complicit in funding war without resistance, is not
contradictory to my faith and to my conscience. Quite simply put, I can
no longer ignore the basic, yet just, wisdom and truth found in the war
tax resisters’ dictum: “If you work for peace, stop paying for war.”

As I have come to accept that I can no longer justify providing money to
my government to pay for the bombs and bullets our forces use to kill
millions abroad, or contribute to the funds that supply and resupply the
arsenals of our allies, such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as they
kill others and repress their own people, my choice to willfully not pay
taxes has crystallized. It has been aided, in great part, by the
testimonies of those who have practiced war tax resistance, in some
cases, for several decades, and who by their courage and dedication to
laws of love and peace have risked the authority of the federal
government to follow what is right. I am also indebted to peers like Rory
Fanning and Logan Mehl-Laturi and old friends, like
Count Leo Tolstoy, who, by
articulating their convictions, have helped not just to educate me, but
to embolden me.

This week, I am saying to the
U.S.
government: No more war with my tax dollars. I am refusing to pay the
$593 I owe in taxes, and have instead donated this money to important
community projects including a youth-led farm, an environmental justice
organization, and two community art projects.

Paula Rogge contributed a column to The Cap Times urging readers to “put tax dollars to work preventing war.” She writes: “Over the last 34 years I have filed my tax returns yearly, but redirected my federal income taxes to organizations that meet basic human needs and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.”

An Unpaid Bill

Pair Refuse To Pay Tax For Military Use

Menlo Park
(UP) — Roy C.
Kepler and his wife, Patricia, refused
yesterday to pay their
1955 federal income tax because they object to
the government’s military spending.

The Keplers, who operate a book store here, sent their
1955 return properly made out to the collector of
Internal Revenue in San Francisco. But instead of enclosing a check, they sent
a letter.

The letter stated their opposition to the nation’s $34 billion military budget
and development of the
H-bomb.

“This policy of deterrence through mutual terror and the threat of massive
retaliation is, in plain words, preparation for mass killing on the one hand
and suicide on the other,” they said.

Kepler said he and his wife belong to a group known as the Tax Refusal
Committee. He said it was founded years ago by
Rev. Ernest R. Bromley,
Sharonville, Ohio, whose name appeared on a mimeographed statement attached to
the Keplers’ letter. The statement bore the names of 29 persons, including the
Keplers, who comprise the committee.

Harold Hawkins, district director of Internal Revenue, said the affair will be
handled “in a routine manner.” He said the local office would send a written
request for remittance. If this is ignored, tax liens will probably be filed
against the Keplers.

The Keplers turned up again in a San Mateo Times
article the following year (3 July 1957):

Menlo Couple Resist
U.S. Tax

Menlo Park — Roy C. Kepler, local book store
owner, has again informed the federal government that he doesn’t intend to
pay his income tax as long as the country continues to create and test nuclear
weapons.

Replying to a notice that his 1956 income taxes
are unpaid and overdue, Kepler states in a letter to the district director of
internal revenue that “my wife and I… are determined not to support any
government in the preparation of genocidal weapons which can destroy a whole
city by blast and fire, and then kill millions of others for thousands of
miles around through radioactive fallout…”

The Keplers first came to gain publicity on their stand a year ago when they
refused to pay their 1955 income taxes.

Unperturbed internal revenue officials at that time merely attached a portion
of the Keplers’ bank account to pay the taxes and penalties. They have
indicated they will follow the same procedure this year.

In his letter to the district director, Kepler states, “One significant change
has come about since our initial refusal last
year.”

“The American people,” he claims, “are more disturbed than ever before about
the creation and testing of nuclear weapons of mass murder; public opinion
here and throughout the world is increasingly demanding an end to such
madness…”

A United Press International dispatch from this
date in 1959:

Six Refuse to Pay Tax on War Making Grounds in State

Philadelphia (UPI) — A perennial refusal to pay taxes on the grounds the money goes for war purposes bobbed up again today as the midnight deadline for income tax returns neared.

The Peacemakers, described as a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian
concepts of non-violence, announced 73 of its members signed declarations of
non-payment of taxes. Sixteen were from the Philadelphia area.

The signers included David Gale (3509 Hamilton
St.) Philadelphia, a member of
the crew of the Golden Rule, the 30-foot pacifist ketch which attempted to
sail into the U.S.
nuclear testing zone in the Pacific last year.

Rev. Maurice McCrackin, a
Presbyterian minister, and
Rev. Theodore Olson, a
Baptist minister from suburban Fallsington, also were listed as signers of the
non-payment pact.

McCrackin is at an Allenwood,
Pa., federal camp serving
the last weeks of a six month term for refusal to pay federal income taxes.
Olson was released last
Dec. 23 from the
county jail at Cheyenne, Wyo.,
after serving four months for his attempt to impede construction of the first
U.S. international
missile base.

The Peacemakers is the group which called for non-cooperation in a civil
defense drill scheduled for next Friday.

In announcing the non-payment declaration, the group said “war-making has come
to be the major activity of the federal government.”

“The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only
because of military expenditures which take four-fifths of the tax dollar,”
the declaration said.

“The sharp upward trend of expenditures for high-powered bombs and long-range
missiles greatly increases the possibility that mankind will be extinguished.
We dissent, and want our lives to be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

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